Threatened species and the OBP

By Richard King, on December 5th, 2012

From everyone’s comments, I agree it’s probably a whole group of factors, especially the RSPB being very active in the UK. I still think it’s more a regional issue, with Australians caring less due to other local factors. I have read somewhere many years ago, that some of the factors why Australians don’t relate to the environment are the harsh generally hot climate, mostly nocturnal animals and tough spiky plants. In other words, none of the soft very green plants and moist inviting environments of Europe, the long distances to some places causing feelings of remoteness and isolation, probably also not helping.

I also agree with Peter, that access to wildlife or birding areas doesn’t seem to be a problem most of the time, and if people want to get involved in saving wildlife there are many opportunities around. The internet abounds with stuff.

I’m not sure Simon that I have understood your survey details, but a response of 1015 from 80 000 seems very low, that saying to me again people don’t ‘care’. Saying 75% do care, from the few responses, doesn’t seem valid. There is a huge difference between someone saying they ‘want to see amazing wildlife’ and actually ‘caring’! Caring involves action of some type, generally a heart attitude. Most of the people I meet and know, love seeing wildlife, but none that I’m aware of actually do anything like care or want to! I’ve taken many people birding who have really enjoyed it, but not become birders or joined any groups! Some after being told that this birding ‘area’ is threatened, just respond with a ‘shame about that’.

At the end of the day, the wildlife environment is like climate change, we know things are going to go from bad to worse, but no one will do anything until it’s well too late (probably already is!). All of us will just have to adapt to what’s left.

Richard King

===============================

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au

http://birding-aus.org ===============================

Simon Mustoe

December 7, 2012 at 3:23 pm

I rest my case. This has nothing to do with ‘science’. This is a teenager doing what teenagers do. How many of us got into wildlife as a teenager by doing science? I suspect we did it out of childhood curiosity. Why penalise children for being children? Simon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Simon Mustoe Tel: +61 (0) 405220830 | Skype simonmustoe | Email simonmustoe@ecology-solutions.com.au

Visit BIRD-O at http://www.bird-o.com Follow BIRD-O on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/birdodotcom Like BIRD-O on Facebook? Visit http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Bird-O/117732794921095 Email BIRD-O at info@bird-o.com

To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)

December 7, 2012 at 3:20 pm

Peter, You’re absolutely right of course. I think like you say, it’s an insidious threat. It’s mentioned enough to make people scared and there are sadly instances where the authorities do decide to claim a scalp – the serious intentions regarding these teenagers and the whale are an example. You could be next … ! I think we have an over-zealous bureaucracy full of people who take the ‘letter of the law’ into their own hands instead of leaving it to the lawyers. At the same time, our regulations have started to include the punitive measures that we’re all familar with for driving offences and the like but often the control in environmental offences rests with people who are not trained in policing. There is an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of such tactics – it saves money and acts as a disincentive but in my humble opinion, many of these things are taken too far. For instance, I hopped a fence a few years back to check out a dragonfly and was promptly charged and fined $250 by a parks representative. Whilst they were just ‘doing their job’, they area allowed to use best judgement but most choose not to. Regards, Simon.

peter

December 7, 2012 at 1:15 pm

The question then is whether this rule is doing a good job of protecting wildlife and habitats, or is doing more harm than good by making it harder for people to become interested in the natural world.

I suspect that, given that kids seem to be able to collect shells, etc, on the beach unchallenged, it’s not doing much harm, if any. Someone please correct me if they know of any cases where innocent people have been charged.

Simon quoted the case of DSE chasing kids who climbed onto a dead whale. Is that this case: http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/breaking-news-blog/outrage-over-boys-whale-stunt/20120719-22bjk.html

If so, the fact that one of them is in a surfing pose on the whale makes me wonder how scientific his interest in it is. I also think that had they not photographed themselves on it, let alone posting the photos on a public website, nothing would have come of it, and that they could have examined the whale as much as they liked without problems.

Peter Shute

Carl Clifford

December 7, 2012 at 11:41 am

Stephen,

Peter is correct in surmising that the reason that one can not legally pick up eggs, feathers, shell etc, is to do with prosecutions. Leaving open the “I just found it on the ground” loophole, would make prosecution of traffickers very difficult, as the onus of proof still lies with those prosecuting in this country. It is similar to reason why we have the laws on “theft by finding”.

Cheers,

owheelj

December 7, 2012 at 10:24 am

I think there’s also an attitude that things in national parks should stay there, and that if people took home samples it would degrade the park. This especially applies to pretty things that people enjoy looking at – flowers, shells etc. but is probably applied to everything. “Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photos” is on a lot of Tasmanian Parks documents (or used to be).

Jeremy

"Stephen Ambrose"

December 7, 2012 at 10:14 am

I’m sure that there will be an environment bureaucrat from an Australian government department will answer Peter’s question. But Denise’s comments about picking up dead snakes reminds me of another anecdote that I read a few weeks ago.

The University of Western Australia celebrates its 100th anniversary in February 2013. As part of the celebrations leading up to that event, anecdotes from past and present staff and students of the university have been published on UWA’s centenary website.

One anecdote, written by one of the late Professor Bert Main’s Ph.D graduates from the 1950s, relates to Bert’s dead snake experience. Bert Main was a Professor of Zoology at UWA and was legendary for his contributions to Australian zoology and conservation, particularly in the 1950s, 60s & 70s. I was fortunate to be a zoology student at UWA towards the end of Bert’s career in the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. The anecdote relates to a zoology class excursion to Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth. Bert and his class of students were walking along a track when they came across a dead Western Dugite (a venomous snake). Always keen to seize an opportunity, Bert picked up the dead snake to show the students the locations and structure of the snake’s fangs. Yes, the snake was dead, but when Bert prised opened the jaws of the snake with his hands, the jaws snapped shut, purely as a reflex action, the fangs sinking into one of Bert’s fingers. According to the anecdote, the venom made Bert seriously ill and he had to be hospitalised.

So, I suspect that Peter is right about government policies that restrict the collection of dead animals and animal materials. But there are also occasions when handling dead animals might be dangerous. The dugite that Bert Main handled had probably not been dead long if the jaw muscles and ligaments were still reflexive and the venom was still potent. But a lot of road kills that members of the public might find are usually quite fresh too.

Cheers, Stephen

Dr Stephen Ambrose Director Ambrose Ecological Services Pty Ltd

December 6, 2012 at 12:13 pm

I assume that this policy that you can’t even pick up a shell or feather is intended to simplify prosecution of those who kill animals for their feathers, skins, teeth, etc. Can anyone please verify that?

I’ve often heard stories (mainly here) of people being threatened like this, but are the threats ever carried out when it’s obvious there’s not really anything untoward going on?

Denise Goodfellow

December 6, 2012 at 11:06 am

Simon and Debbie

Several years ago I was threatened with prosecution for taking roadkilled snakes to my eight year-old son’s school. Rowan had been concerned that his schoolmates, many of whom went camping, could not tell a venomous snake from a non-venomous.

The kids were delighted at seeing close-up and handling my freshly dead Black Whip Snake and not-so-fresh Olive Python, looking at their teeth with a hand lens and helping me count scales. Their wise teacher didn’t interfere at all, just joined with me afterwards in telling the kids to go wash their hands.

I spent all day at that school with one teacher after the other, asking me to show the snakes to their class. And along with the showing Rowan and I gave a rather hilarious little pantomine on treating snake bite, with me being the panicked victim and my child, the calm responder. The children loved it and the teachers had nothing but praise for our efforts.

The next day a senior ranger, whose son happened to be in Rowan’s class, rang. He had two messages for me: a) It was the Conservation Commission’s job to teach kids about snakes, and b) I had broken the law in handling the dead animals, and I could be prosecuted.

I asked one question: Had the Con Comm ever been to that school to help kids learn about snakes. The answer? No.

In reply to his second remark I told him to go ahead, that I’d take it all the way.

He hesitated, then told me they’d “probably have egg on (their) face” if they prosecuted. Years later, on telling this story to a couple of American scientists, visiting birders, they mentioned being threatened with prosecution by a ranger for just looking at a dead taipan on Cape York.

The distance placed between our wildlife and children is now paying off, as is the distance (as Simon rightly points out) between life and death. And personally I can’t really think of one positive result.

Some years ago I stayed with writer, Bryce Courtenay and his partner, Christine, in their Hunter Valley home. Bryce and I went on a long walk up into the hills, he for the exercise and me to look for birds and other wildlife.

Bryce didn’t seem to know one bird from another, and the only time he showed real interest was when a honeyeater became trapped in the house.

But his love of the Australian bush seeped out of every pore. Read “Four Fires” and you’ll see it. Bryce, for all the criticism of his writing, probably did more than most to bring the bush to life.

Each of us needs to help take our wildlife off its pedestal, not to cheapen it, but to bring it close and make it intimate; to make our kids feel that we’re not fighting to preserve a remote God, but part of ourselves.

Some Aboriginal people still do this. For example my Kunwinjku relatives (of western Arnhem Land) all have particular dreamings, as do I, my husband and children. My wetland dreamings mean that I must look after estuarine crocodile and its habitat.

And what about my children? For Rowan in particular, wildlife has been anything but remote. He, has python dreaming. As a five year-old he wept when he first saw a python badly injured by a car. To him she wasn’t a sacrosanct piece of the Australian bush, but his sister, dying.

Any intimate relationship with wildlife also brings in the uncomfortable, for many, image of death. As I wrote in Quiet Snake Dreaming, many can only see the meat they eat as neat little chops in the butcher’s window. Any association with the live animal they find hard to take.

The Kunwinjku perspective? I cannot kill or eat crocodile as it is my dreaming, but I can python, because it is not. Balance and counterbalance. This is a view known to others. Read Rabindranth Tagore’s Nobel Prize-winning Gitanjali:

Because I love this life I know I shall love death as well. The child cries when the mother takes it from the right breast, only to find solace in the left one.

Australian society lacks that balance in our view and treatment of wildlife.

I write this having just returned from Bryce Courtnenay’s funeral at Darling Point, Sydney. I doubt few, of the hundreds there would have had as intimate relationship with the Australian landscape, as did Bryce. But surely in his words, his influence, he brought that landscape a little closer to many.

So let’s start with next Australia Day. Instead of whooping it up at the beach with a barbie and a beer why not think of other ways to celebrate? White settlement of this country

David Adams

December 5, 2012 at 5:51 pm

are doing their best to care for our biodiversity, failing it is not because of their lack of commitment.

That seems hard to argue with. It’s difficult to imagine that people involved in habitat and wildlife care and restoration don’t care a lot. If I understood Prof. Flannery’s point, the problem is organizational, not individual. If I remember correctly, he made much the same point nearly twenty years ago in The Future Eaters. As I remember it, the way he approached it there was that the system of reserves and parks in Australia wasn’t rational, consistent or aimed at any particular outcome. In the clip that kicked off these threads, his point that no one is accountable _structurally_ seemed like a reasonably common-sense perspective. ===============================

Birding-Aus

Threatened species and the OBP

9 comments to Threatened species and the OBP

Mailing List

Book Search

Meta